ericspinelli Diglot Senior Member Japan Joined 5783 days ago 249 posts - 493 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: Korean, Italian
| Message 18 of 22 15 April 2011 at 7:37am | IP Logged |
Lucky Charms wrote:
Arekkusu wrote:
ericspinelli wrote:
1. Japanese uses Subject-Object-Verb sentence
structure (I the apple ate) |
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I'd remove "the".
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And "I" as well, in order to be consistent with the advice given in other posts. The
only necessary elements in this sentence are "apple (direct object marker) ate", unless we really need to emphasize who. |
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While neither of your points are inaccurate, I chose what I did to simplify as well as to isolate. Point 1 touches only on basic and standard word order and I feel changing the order of a valid English sentence accomplishes that goal the best. The issue of subjects and articles are broached in following points.
The goal of the piece is to introduce Japanese to English speakers, covering the major differences one by one. I wasn't seeking elegant solutions that make sense to Japanese speakers.
Speaking of elegant solutions, however, I wish when I started learning Japanese that somebody had told me the language can be divided into verbals (verbs, i-adjectives, and the copula) and everything else. Knowing that verbs and adjectives don't differ in function helps clear up a number of things like relative clauses and nominalizers. I'd take it a step further and explain to learners that な is also a verbal. If you can grasp all that, most of the language reduces to mastering particles and vocabulary.
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Lightning Groupie United Kingdom livelanguagelove.bloRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5338 days ago 58 posts - 70 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese
| Message 20 of 22 17 April 2011 at 12:01pm | IP Logged |
Learn words not kanji.
I wasted many hours learning individual Kanji to realise it would suit me more to just study words and learn the Kanji I encounter in the words. :-)
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irrationale Tetraglot Senior Member China Joined 6050 days ago 669 posts - 1023 votes 2 sounds Speaks: English*, Spanish, Mandarin, Tagalog Studies: Ancient Greek, Japanese
| Message 21 of 22 17 April 2011 at 12:24pm | IP Logged |
Lightning wrote:
Learn words not kanji.
I wasted many hours learning individual Kanji to realise it would suit me more to just study words and learn the Kanji I encounter in the words. :-) |
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This is exactly what I'm doing. However, I am at an advantage because I already have studied Chinese. I could imagine that for a totally new person to characters, it could be overwhelming, but I believe it is the best way. No pain no gain. I couldn't imagine remembering meaningless lists of kanji and all of their readings...seems like a huge waste of time to me.
Edited by irrationale on 17 April 2011 at 12:25pm
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Tropi Diglot Groupie Austria Joined 5431 days ago 67 posts - 87 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: Mandarin
| Message 22 of 22 17 April 2011 at 6:55pm | IP Logged |
Lightning wrote:
Learn words not kanji.
I wasted many hours learning individual Kanji to realise it would suit me more to just study words and learn
the Kanji I encounter in the words. :-) |
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Same here. This is also the main reason why I don't like Heisig's approach to kanji/hanzi.
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